Another week and another Game of Thrones wedding. Let’s just go ahead and say if you have not watched last night’s episode stop reading now! As always this post will be full to the brim of spoilers so you have been warned.

The Lovely Couple

Before we start with the wedding lovelies let’s talk about all the other random scenes that didn’t seem important now. Well at least to those who don’t know what’s coming. The episode started out with a hunt involving The Bastard Ramsey Snow, some chick named Miranda that I for the life of me can’t place who she is or where she’s come from, Reek– the artist formally known as Theon Greyjoy and their prey– a poor, short lived girl.

We got to see the girl get chased down, shot by Miranda and then get eaten to death by Ramsey’s dogs. The changes in Reek are very obvious in this episode. He’s timid, beaten, and too scared to fight back. As much as I hated Theon he never deserved all that The Bastard has done to him.

Stepping outside of the box though I just want to say the actor that plays The Bastard (Iwan Rheon) is one of my favorite actors. He was both parts creepy and heroic on Misfits and I’m both scared and excited to see him continue with this role. He will be one of the great villains this story needs.

Things you need to know about The Bastard: He’s scary (yeah I know you know that). Scary as in he scares Roose Bolton and if you can scare a man that would kill his King at a Wedding in exchange for Winterfell that’s saying something. Also there has been a ton of torture and nastiness that you haven’t gotten to see. He’s also about to have a wedding, at least if they stick to the books, however not as exciting a one as you’d hope.

We also got to see Bran this go round and feel his frustration. One thing they did show, but I don’t think explain well was what happened when Bran touched the Heart Tree. So:

What you need to know about Bran: when he is hooked up to the Weirwood he can see what any heart tree has seen, wherever, whenever. There’s a lot more to it then that, but that’s why he saw his dad and all those other images.

We also see some scenes with The Red Witch and Stannis. Stannis’ wife is gleefully watching her brother burn to death. Needless to say there are some issues there, but mostly we are just being reminded that they still exist and stuff is about to happen there.

Now let’s move on to the hard stuff. Cathy will join me for this part of the discussion.

I found this next set of images on Tumblr and I thought it showed more than I could explain:

This photo set speaks to a book theory that I’ll talk about at the end, but I thought it was fitting here.

I remember throwing the book across the room when I read the Red Wedding, and I refused to continue reading for a few days. In stark contrast, never in all of literature or film have I ever been happier when a character died than when Joffrey did.

I relished in the happiness until I realized that Tyrion was going to be blamed for his death. Oddly enough, Tryion’s journey after this moment is one of my favorite character subplots. I’m very excited to see how the show portrays his journey.

Joffrey dying is going to have the same effect as Ned dying. The storylines of the denizens of Westeros are going to be shaken up, people will be scattered across the realm, and much chaos will ensue. I for one cannot wait.

If you’ve read the books, you know who slipped Joffrey the poison. If not, I won’t spoil it. One detail I noticed was that after Joffrey cuts the pie with the sword, the camera focuses on some dead birds in the pie. I was wondering if that was a clue that the poison in the show’s version was in the pie, not the wine as it is in the book. I’m not a stickler for keeping everything the same between show and book, if it was in the pie, then that’s a fun little change for the show. We shall see.

OK me again. Joffery needed to die. So therefore I was worried that he therefore would live a long and happy life killing whores in his room with crossbows. Once again I’m going to issue a warning. If you are a watchling (aka someone who hasn’t read the books) I’d recommend you stop reading now as I’m going to throw out some theories that if you haven’t read through book 5 will ruin some things for you.

I’ll give you time to navigate away and just post this other awesome photo set:

So much emotion. Too bad in reality Sansa is still a clueless twat.

OK back to those theories and spoilers. We see Margaery’s grandmother go up and straighten Sansa’s necklace (which took place of the hairnet in the books) and what I didn’t notice last night, but expected was this:

We see a jewel missing from Sansa’s necklace. A jewel that is in fact the poison that kills Joffery. My assumption? The grandmother takes the jewel here, then passes it off to Margaery who slips it in Joff’s cup between his drink before cutting the pie and the drink he has after his first bite. After all Margaery is the one that takes the cup from Joff and sets it down on the table while the pie is being cut.

Ser Dontos runs off with Sansa setting her off on her next adventure. An adventure full of just as much excitement as before.

So about what I said about the Tyrion/Sansa photoset. It is stated in the books numerous times anytime someone is exceptionally gallant that they are like Rhaegar. Jamie and Cersei have little honor (Jamie much more than Cersei), Tywin has absolutely no honor either. So where does Tyrion’s honor and sense of morality come from?

In the books it’s stated that The Mad King was unduly interested in Tywin’s late wife and that Tywin resigned as Hand quickly and returned to Casterly Rock. My thoughts? Perhaps the Mad King raped or more likely had an affair with Tywin’s wife and Tyrion is the result of that. The holes in this theory are that I would think that Tywin would have killed Tyrion as an infant if that was the case, but also Tywin is in it for the long game so maybe Tyrion was meant to be kept as insurance against the Targaryens.

Tyrion does talk about his fascination with dragons a lot so perhaps one of Dany’s dragons will end up being his.

What are your thoughts on my theories? I have many many more– mostly involving Jon Snow– but we’ll get to those later.

Up next: Where is Dontos taking Sansa, what will happen to Tyrion, who else is going to die?

A couple weeks ago I noticed that Veronica Mars was on Amazon Prime for free and that fateful day I decided to try it out. I’d been interested in it since I saw some blurbs about how quickly the fan base had raised money for the movie on Kickstarter and all the records they had broken doing so. Any show that can motivate people to shell out the $2 million needed to greenlight the movie in 11 hours and almost $6 million in the 30 day time period has my attention. (You know– the whole “Money talks” thing).

Here’s the kickstarter video they posted to get donations. It’s very much worth the 5 minute watch:

Well I fell into a haze of Veronica Mars. I rushed through all three seasons and was definitely left wanting more (which conveniently we will soon be getting). This post isn’t a breakdown of every little thing that happened in the series, but more of a list of why you should try this series if you missed it the first time around. I am going to excuse myself for missing it the first time because it came out in 2004. In 2004 I was graduating college, trying to find a job and had this whole “social life” thing going on. All those things have settled themselves down (definitely no social life going on now). Now a week and a half after watching that first episode I’m jonesing for some more. Here’s why:

Veronica Mars is shot with a very film noir feel. It’s a great change from the soap opera feel of the dramas these days, or the grittiness of cop shows and it totally fits with the premise of the show. See Veronica’s dad is a former sheriff that had been run out of office the year previous because of an embarrassment that the public saw as his fault. Now he’s a private investigator that has his teenage daughter help him out from time to time. There are a few reasons I like this set up.

First off because it makes sense. Someone who had been in law enforcement becoming a P.I. is a logical jump and a struggling single dad business owner having his daughter run errands and answer phones is legit. Unlike so many civilian crime solving shows (ex. Murder, She Wrote) murders and crimes don’t follow Veronica and her dad around, but they get hired to solve them. (I’m not knocking Murder, She Wrote– I love Angela Lansbury, I just question that there wasn’t really just a serial killer in Cabot Cove). I like a show so much more when I’m not questioning the entire basis that it is built on.

Secondly these characters are real people. See above GIF. Keith Mars is goofy and lovable, but is tough when he needs to be. He’s not some male model that is going around broodily solving cases. He’s real. Her best friend Wallace, although very cute, is not oozing perfection, her boyfriends are cute, but not walking around shirtless every five minutes. Now there are insanely rich people in the area which is unrealistic to me, but I’m going to chalk that up to it being based in California. People are probably way richer in California than in Tennessee. Well, at least my area of Tennessee.

Back to the real people thing though there aren’t any characters that are 100% good or 100% bad. All characters have a large mix of good and bad and I have said before how those kind of characters are my favorite. I empathized with many of the killers right along with the main characters. Which those main characters weren’t very squeaky clean either. Veronica and entourage don’t exactly make the best moral choices every time and they don’t usually get away with it either.

Thirdly (I guess) Veronica’s love interests are interesting. She’s not some mooney eyed girl out to try to find her “soul mate”. Don’t get me wrong, she’s a teenage girl so she does get a little lovesick every now and then, but she’s more of a fighter than a lover. My only questions about her love story is that there is never any tension between her and Wallace. None of her boyfriends question the inordinate amount of time she spends with him. He’s a guy, she’s a girl. Even if she’s not interested at all surely someone questioned this relationship even in passing. The only other love story I wish they had touched on was the relationship between the leader of the local biker gang and Veronica.

The leader, “Weevil”, is always there to help Veronica out and she always has his back too. I just wish that they had touched on that a little more. Of course I’m sure they meant to go on longer than 3 seasons so maybe that would have been touched on later.

Lastly (since I’m sticking to the “ly” thing) I wish that I had caught this series when it aired. I’m not saying that me watching would have kept it from being canceled, but I would have felt like I did my part. This series was well written, with witty dialog, convincing story lines and the actors do a great job. I’m very excited that the movie is getting made and the trailer looks like it’s going to be not only a good companion to the series, but a great stand alone movie. So go out, watch the series, and then go see the movie in March (although it’s mostly only being played in AMC theaters aka no theater near me so I may break my rule of watching illegally— if it was anywhere withing 3 hours away I would drive and pay a crazy sum of money to see in in theaters). Enjoy. You’ll thank me later.

I’m a sucker for a movie based on a book. So when my close friend (who runs this awesome blog) recommended that I read The Mortal Instruments series and I saw that there was a movie about to come out I couldn’t resist. I hurried and read it finishing it just before the movie came out.

My thoughts? The books had promise. I had hopes that the author could develop the story line into something pretty good. I wasn’t hooked like with series like Harry Potter, Mistborn, The Wheel of Time, A Song of Ice and Fire or even, ahem. . .Twilight. (Confession time: I included some of those series in my list to let you know I don’t always sit at home reading sappy young adult love fiction).

The movie however, as happens most of the time, was not on par with the book and I wasn’t super impressed with the book. There were quite a few painful moments and times when the ferocious shadowhunters didn’t seem too bright (I mean really? You froze the demons and then tried to squeeze past them instead of stabbing them with your demon killing angel blade?) It still was better than the first Twilight movie. Having a lead actress with more than one facial expression probably helped. So I trudged on.

The rest of the series was a quick read. I averaged about 3/4 a book a day and I was genuinely interested to find out what happened. Time and again though I was disappointed in where the author took us. It started out as a dark mix of Harry Potter (a young person finds out that they are part of a magical world– not only part of that world, but an important, slightly famous, part) and Twilight (girl falls in love with bad boy with a soul and their love is dangerous). Although it was somewhat an obvious plot line I thought it had promise. The author tried to tackle more adult subjects than I expected in YA fiction: homosexuality, premarital sex, incest, murder. However, she approached them in such unrealistic and immature ways it ruined the attempt.

Homosexuality: OK, Alec is gay. That’s cool. OK he hasn’t come out yet. I’m sure he’ll work up to it. OK he does that and gets in a relationship. I’m even cool with the fact that he became obsessive and basically the worst boyfriend ever. I’m not cool with the fact that the author felt the need to shout “DON’T FORGET THEY ARE GAY!” every chance she got. I totally hadn’t forgotten.

Premarital sex: THIS is the subject that bothered me the most. None of the characters had a problem with having sex. In fact almost all of them WANT to have sex, but conveniently something happens to stop it. Somehow it’s never morals or parents that stop it, but “I just want to make out a cuddle” ’cause teenage boys TOTALLY go for that. Do I think it’s a good idea for a bunch of 15 year olds to be having sex every chance they get? No. Do I think unsupervised 15 year olds will have sex every chance they get? Most definitely. So don’t pretend they won’t.

Incest: Is it just me or did Clary and Jace have more sexual tension when they thought they were brother and sister than after they found out they weren’t related? It was almost as if once they found out they could have a relationship they weren’t that into each other anymore. That only works in A Song of Ice and Fire. The Lannisters were messed up enough to pull it off; Clary and Jace, not so much.

Murder was really just brushed upon. Jace murdered while he was under a spell so it’s all cool. Clary only kills demons and Simon just almost killed someone so once again we’re all good.

Do I think these books are worth the read? Yes, but check them out of the library and read so many other series first. OK here’s where I’m going to say something that will piss many of you off. I think Twilight is a better series. The characters are developed better, the villains are scarier, and the love story makes more sense. So if you’re looking for a YA cheesy love story pick up Twilight again or if you’re looking for a YA series that has a little more meat to it read the Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson.

How do I think this series could have been saved? If it had been written about Simon. Simon was the only realistic character. He dealt with issues like a real person would, I wish he (and all the other characters) had been at least 5 years older than they were to make all of their independence believable, but he was the most real character in the book.

So I’m sorry if I blasted your favorite book. If you disagree let me know why. Back up your argument. I didn’t hate the series I just got distracted by what I saw as unrealistic events or circumstances (no I’m not talking about portals or magic, I’m talking about unsupervised teens running around New York or teens in charge of their hormones).

Once again if you have an argument that could change my mind– throw it at me.